


awe, admiration, respect (what love requires)

by LiveLaughLovex



Category: The Code (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Feelings Realization, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 01, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25987966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLaughLovex/pseuds/LiveLaughLovex
Summary: The fact that he doesn't fall feverishly in love with Harper the first time he sets eyes on her is probably a good thing, seeing as she spends the better part of the first nine months of their acquaintanceship either quietly seething or openly irritated whenever she’s forced to be in the same room as him.(or, Abe's long, introspective journey to realizing his feelings for one Harper Li.)
Relationships: John "Abe" Abraham/Harper Li
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	awe, admiration, respect (what love requires)

**Author's Note:**

> We don't fall in love. Love requires awe, admiration, and respect." - Laura Schlessinger

John Abraham does not fall in love with Harper Li instantaneously, or even quickly, really, when all things are considered. He has always been leery of the idea of love at first sight, has always considered it to be a rather naïve notion, as it’s impossible to learn the things about a person that will come to truly matter just by gazing fondly at them from the other side of a room. He’s never enjoyed the concept of falling in love with an idea – an ironic thing, really, considering how often in his life he’s ended up doing exactly that.

(It’s what he does with Alex. He’s known her so long, and he becomes a big part of her life, of the girls’ lives, at a time when everything else seems to be falling apart around them. The thought of it seems so simple. He can take care of Jason’s wife, of his children, now that his best friend can’t do so, and maybe, just maybe, he can find some happiness of his own in the process. But it’s an idea that doesn’t reach fruition, because their relationship barely survives the return flight from Indiana, much less the remainder of both their lives.)

So, no, he doesn’t fall feverishly in love with Harper the first time he sets eyes on her. That turns out to be a good thing, too, seeing as she spends the better part of the first nine months of their acquaintanceship either quietly seething or openly irritated whenever she’s forced to be in the same room as him.

He knows it’s his own fault she feels this way about him, knows he’s well-deserving of her annoyance and derision. He refers to her as _Boot_ , and openly mocks her fiancé (he doesn’t feel very guilty about that one, though. He’s not the idiot who chose the name _Bard_ , after all). When all’s said and done, he’s not really in need of an explanation as to why she so frequently looks ready to punch him in the face the very moment their eyes meet. He gets it. He’s been a jerk. It just takes him a while to regret that, is all.

He does come to regret it, though, because it’s not long before Harper’s brilliance becomes obvious. She’s extraordinary at this work. It isn’t until nine months after her arrival at Quantico that she first sets foot on a battlefield, but it becomes apparently much sooner that she’s got a fight in her Abe’s rarely, if ever, seen in anyone else. The things she believes in, she believes in them so absolutely that it’s almost intimidating. She never wavers, not where it matters. She simply refuses to fold.

It’s hard not to respect that about her. It’s hard not to respect everything about her, honestly, especially after she manages to build a case with details Abe probably wouldn’t have even thought to request. Harper’s only seen combat the once, but she is absolutely _excellent_ at winning the wars presented to her in the courtroom.

It’s enough to make anyone fall in love, seeing what Harper Li’s capable of in front of a judge and jury. She is able to hold tight to her compassion while also sticking easily to the letter of the law. It makes her one of the best lawyers Abe’s ever seen. It also makes him realize, rather quickly, that she’s one of the greatest people he knows.

Still, it isn’t during the Grsezak court martial that he falls in love. It isn’t during the Sloan court martial, either, when she tells him off with that shouldn’t-be-charming smile on her face, or when she’s so _indignant_ at being told to look for a man with one of the most common names Abe’s ever heard of. It’s not during the Meszaros case, when she teases him and has an existential crisis in between cracking the entire thing wide open, or as he watches her _destroy_ William Albrecht. It isn’t even when he walks into that tent in Idlib and sees her for the first time after Dyer’s death and then sits across from her on a hop to Afghanistan barely a week later, faced once again with her enviable willpower.

It probably starts soon after that - when she flies home to make a teenage girl feel more comfortable, or the day she breaks off an engagement he’s always considered destined to make her miserable. Perhaps it’s when she tells him she’s taken that opening with SERE, or when he sits behind the wheel and listens to the fight she is having with her mother – a fight she’s not getting a word in edgewise during, and a fight that’s had without either involved party speaking much of any of the four languages he can speak. He is likely feeling _something_ a little less than platonic when she nearly ruins her reputation with Schuylkill in the name of defending Abe, even before she’s entirely aware of what she’s defending him _against_.

Yes, all these moments _matter_. They help to build up to it, of course. They teach him things about Harper – and about himself – that he wouldn’t otherwise know. But none of them are the moment. It isn’t in that very instant that he falls in love. Or, at the very least, it’s not in that very instant that he realizes he’s fallen in love.

That comes later on, after Bard and Alex, after his trial and her SERE training. It comes halfway through their first case together after both their returns, late at night, when they’re in the conference room with a spread of Chinese food and mugs of rapidly cooling coffee before them, heatedly debating the best way to handle a case that’s just landed in their laps. It’s as he tells a joke he knows is stupid before he even utters it and she laughs anyway that he realizes this is how he’d like to spend the rest of his life. If he is allowed to do this for all the time he has left – if he’s allowed to make her laugh, to make her flash that grin she only ever seems to offer him – then the days he’s got left will be the happiest of his entire existence.

It comes into his mind suddenly, the same way the woman seated across from him had come into his life, and it changes everything, just as Harper’s mere presence has consistently done for the past four months or so. It should scare him. It doesn’t. And maybe that should care him even more, but he remains completely calm as he redirects his attention to Harper, as she walks him through the idea that’s just come to her and they agree it’s the best approach.

“Abe?” Harper asks curiously after several minutes have passed in relative silence, tilting her head to stare at him with wide, amused eyes. “You still with me over there?”

He meets her gaze, nods once. Smiles warmly, and feels something inside him shift as she returns it. “Yeah,” he assures her. “Yeah, I’m still with you.”

(He doesn’t tell her all he could in that instant – that he’ll always be with her, however she wants, until she orders him away. He doesn’t say it, but the look on her face makes him think she’s heard it anyway, seen it somewhere in his gaze. Something shifts as she stares at him, her smile becoming something even warmer, and he wonders if she’s having some realizations of her own at the moment.

If she’s not, that’s alright. If she never does, that’s fine, too. But if it’s just time she needs… well, he’s good at being patient. After all, some things – the most important things – they’re really worth waiting for. _Harper_ is worth waiting for.

For what feels like the first time in his life, he’s not in love with an idea. He’s in love with a person. He’s in love with _her_. He always will be.

And if it takes her a while to feel the same, he’ll be okay with it. If she never does, he’ll be okay with that, too. No matter what happens, he’s found his happiness. A lifetime loving Harper Li, no matter the outcome, will be far from a lifetime wasted. It’ll be a lifetime _lived_.

It’ll be all he’s ever wanted. And isn’t it strange, how life works out, that everything he’s always wanted – the life he’s spent all this time dreaming of – has just been waiting for him to realize that it’s right in front of him all this time?

He still thinks love at first sight isn’t all everyone makes it out to be. Love in general, though? Well, that’s growing on him more and more with every passing moment.)

**Author's Note:**

> I had to go back and watch pretty much every episode of The Code to write out parts of this story, and I regret absolutely nothing. I do hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
